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Teaching Pronunciation Online

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by Sloan-C
AUTHORS:
Steven Donahue
Professor of ESL
Broward Community College
Broward, Florida

I. INTRODUCTION

Succumbing to conventional logic, pronunciation is certainly the one English skills course that must be taught person-to-person or onground. In the following paper, a new model for teaching pronunciation online is presented that links the elements of diagnostic tests, a continuum of teacher/student interaction, mastery tests and individualized feedback.

Throwing down the gauntlet, the trainer for accrediting online facilitators recently quipped that, "Anything, including major brain surgery, can be taught online," as he pitched the virtues of a major course management software (CMS) concern.

Similarly, the boast of being able to teach pronunciation wholly online conjures up images of talking heads, mirrors and fingers pointing to the lips and teeth. However, just as the new printed book revolutionized the traditional lectures of the Middle Ages, today's onground classes must be re-engineered for the virtual classroom.

 

II. ONLINE/ONGROUND TEACHING

The onground classroom is "Time Bound" and "Place Bound" [1 (pp. 10-11)]. Researchers have found that generally, "students can only have 10 seconds of individual attention for every hour of class" or "one full week of individual instruction for the previous 13 years of school attendance." [2 (pp. 10-11)]. By extension, this ten-second-criteria would translate to 450 seconds or about eight minutes of individual treatment for an ESL college level pronunciation course. While the onground course may be augmented by a supportive language laboratory, the unforgiving time constraints of the synchronous classroom preclude lengthy teacher-student interactions. Touting the promise of computers, Bill Gates has observed, "Technology can humanize the education environment" [3 (p. 66)], as a means to defeat the classroom calculus of time and place.

In some respects, the architecture of the synchronous onground pronunciation course is designed to produce the teaching of pronunciation. On the other hand, the goal of the asynchronous online pronunciation course is to produce the learning of pronunciation. Successful online courses must incorporate this shift of locus from teaching to learning. The online learning environment should provide "educational experiences for learners anyway, anyplace, anytime" [1 (p. 22)] and should be designed around the needs of the students.

Onground pronunciation courses are frequently "based on a hierarchical model in which those who know teach those who do not kno" [4 (p. 3)]. Online instruction has a contrasting epistemology where knowledge is constructed through the social interaction of the teacher and students. Online pronunciation courses should have a cooperative or collaborative flavor. Cooperative Learning involves students working in groups on assigned problems under the guidance of the teacher. In contrast, Collaborative Learning is a step beyond and involves the teacher working with the students on a topic that does not have a predetermined answer.

The promise of enhanced learning outcomes through computer-assisted instruction has been supported by studies that found about a 20 percent improvement over conventional classroom methods [5]. Essentially, there are three categories of computer-assisted technology available for the online pronunciation class:

  1. Computer Assisted Instruction (CAI)--Computer is a self-contained teaching machine.

  2. Computer-Managed Instruction (CMI)--Computer organizes instructional materials and student records.

  3. Computer-Mediated Education (CME)--Computer delivers instruction using e-mail, bulletin boards, and other modes.

However, technology is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition for online teaching of pronunciation. In March 1987, the American Association for Higher Education published Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education [6]. Central to the goals of the Principles are the emphases on encouraging, focusing, communicating, respecting and facilitating the students' learning process by promoting active learning. Augmenting technologies do not take away from the main business at hand, promoting improved pronunciation. In the end analysis, the successful online pronunciation course is predicated upon a learner-centered, knowledge-constructed and pedagogically-principled approach.

 

III. PRONUNCIATION MODEL

Figure 1. Pronunciation Model.

A. Diagnosis
In the classroom environment, a laborious time-consuming task is listening to each student's pronunciation profile. Indeed, the goal of an ambitious pronunciation course could be the mastery of up to 131 spoken English phenomena (vowel, consonants, intonation, stress, and adjustments to speech) that are largely automatic processes for the native speaker. For the ambitious teacher, analyzing individual speech patterns at this level of thoroughness would consume several class sessions and require the discriminating ear of a trained listener.

Fortunately, technology can cut down the task of determining which accent modification features require remediation in three ways:

  1. In many cases, listening discrimination can help to determine if an individual has a perception problem. While this is common pedagogy with minimum pairs for consonants and vowels, a computer-assisted program can cover features of intonation, stress, adjustments to speech and other pronunciation patterns practiced by native speakers.

  2. While speech-to-text software is still far from being perfected for the non-native speaker, its use can provide a method for testing the speakers oral competency for producing English sounds.

  3. Knowing the first language of the speaker can lend itself to a useful heuristic for predicting which features of spoken English will be most challenging for that language group.

B. Treatment
Treatment of pronunciation problems can be visualized on a continuum as follows:

Figure 2. Treatment of Pronunciation Problems.

With CAI, the student interacts with a software program which progressively guides the student through pronunciation exercises and individual lessons that may include:

  • Animation

  • Video

  • Multiple Choice

  • Speech-To-Text Accuracy Tests

Teacher involvement is limited with CMI which generally consist of "static" informative Web pages that organize instructional material, class schedules (if applicable), grades or the progress of the student. A teacher may review a student progress profile (and results of diagnostic testing) and recommend reference material such as:

  • How-to pronounciation pages

  • Specific exercises

  • Self-check assignments

The robustness of an online pronunciation course only becomes apparent in the CME mode. Although there are many permutations on this theme, three aspects will be noted here-Interactive, Cooperative and Collaborative.

1. Interactive
Soon audio chat features will be de rigueur for online classrooms and will provide for simultaneous conversations for five or six students. While the value of random, unstructured chats may be nebulous, students responding to teacher-provided scripts and material can improve English pronunciation.

2. Cooperative
A cooperative task involves students working on an assigned topic for which the teacher knows the general answer. Student responses are available to everyone in the group. The teacher facilitates and monitors the participation level of the group. Examples of cooperative pronunciation prompts could include:

  • How many sounds are in English? What are they?

  • Is there a consensus about the meaningful sounds present in English?

  • Are there different opinions about the sounds present in English?

  • What are the most challenging sounds in English to pronounce?

3. Collaborative
A collaborative task attempts to arrive at an answer through interaction and consensus building. While the teacher may initiate the topic for discussion, the answer to it is a unique product of the discussion group. Here, the teacher is an equal who participates with the class to discover new knowledge jointly. Examples of collaborative tasks could include:

  • Not all accent idiosyncrasies for all speakers can be eliminated-by what strategies can these speakers turn an accent weakness into a strength?

  • Non-native speakers of English now outnumber native speakers-is there such a thing as a standard English anymore?

  • Is there an ideal way to teach pronunciation of English?

  • Is Global English an example of cultural imperialism, a medium for peace and prosperity, or simply the Language of the Day?

C. Posttest
Concurrent with or following the treatment stage of an online pronunciation program is a mastery test that determines student progress. The posttest can mirror the initial diagnostic test or include tailored items:

  • Test pronunciation principles learned during treatment

  • Ask for metacognitive insights into producing English sounds

  • Ask for e-mails of selected .wav files of student speech samples

D. Acoustic Analysis
With currently available software and/or hardware packages, it is possible to perform sophisticated acoustic analysis of speech signals online. While this would be time-prohibitive to analyze each sound for every student, the trained teacher who is equipped with the results of the posttest can address the recalcitrant pronunciation problems of students on a sound-by-sound basis. Acoustic analysis includes the following features:

  • Intonation -> analyze speech for pitch and amplitude.

  • Stress -> analyze speech waveforms indicative of stress.

  • Vowels -> analyze on vowel charts or through formants.

  • Consonants -> analyze based on formant, voicing and aspiration patterns.

Figure 3 summarizes the information on Diagnosis, Treatment, Posttest and Acoustic analysis of pronunciation.

Figure 3. Diagnosis, Treatment, Posttest, and Acoustic Analysis of Pronunciation.

IV. SUMMARY

The above has outlined a new model for teaching pronunciation online that links diagnostic tests, treatment involving a continuum of teacher involvement, mastery tests and individual treatment via acoustic analysis. While some of the technology is just coming online, technology is not enough in itself, and it must be augmented with solid pedagogy. The locus of the online pronunciation class must be the delivery of learning, the promoting of active learning and the construction of real-world knowledge of pronunciation that changes the participants in a meaningful way.

V. REFERENCES

  1. O'Banion, Terry, A Learning College for the 21st Century, Phoenix, Oryx Press, 1997.
  2. Heuston, Dustin H., The Future of Education: A Time of Hope and New Delivery Systems, Unpublished paper, From O'Banion, Terry, A Learning College for the 21st Century, Phoenix, Oryx Press, 1997.
  3. Gates, Bill, The Road Ahead, Newsweek, November 27, 1995.
  4. Cross, Patricia, What Do We Know About Students' Learning and How Do We Know It, In AAHE's 1998 National Conference on Higher Education. Available: http://www.aahe.org/cross_lecture.htm
  5. Kulik, Chen-Lin C., and Kulik, James, A,. Effectiveness of Computer-Based Instruction: An Updated Analysis, Computers in Human Behavior, 1991.
  6. Chickering, A.W., and Ehrmann, S.C., Implementing The Seven Principles: Technology as Lever, 1997. Available: http://www.aahe.org/technology/ehrmann.htm